Voodoo5 5500 PCI - Page 1

Published on 5th Aug 2000, written by Tim Smith for Consumer Graphics - Last updated: 27th Apr 2007

Several months
after the release of the Voodoo5 5500 AGP, 3dfx decided to do something
different and release a PCI Voodoo5. This puts them in a unique position
of being the only ones on the market with a high performance PCI graphics
card. Indeed, the only other performance PCI graphics cards out there
are also from 3dfx, being the older Voodoo3 series. Due to limitations
imposed by the older PCI bus architecture, we canâ€™t expect performance
numbers from the PCI version of the V5500 to be equal to the AGP cardâ€™s
numbers on high end systems, but the results are very close. Of course,
when comparing the latest incarnation of the Voodoo5 to other available
PCI cards, it blows the competition away.

For some people that overclock their systems, gamers in particular, using
a PCI video card can alleviate many of the problems associated with overclocking.
The main problem being the increase in the AGP bus speed that goes along
with a FSB speed increase on older BX based boards. With the PCI Voodoo5,
3dfx has allowed the overclocker to benefit from some of the latest graphics
technology without going back to a sub-par level of performance. In fact,
when youâ€™re using one of the latest Intel CPUâ€™s that requires a 133mhz
bus, you donâ€™t have many choices. You can either overclock that older
BX motherboard, give in to Intel and buy extravagantly priced Rambus memory,
or settle for one of the alternatives such as a VIA chipset board. However,
if you go with VIA, be wary of going with a PCI Voodoo5. Due to bugs in
the VIA chipset, the V5 performed at a considerably lower level than what
it should have on my Abit VT6X4, causing a multitude of problems and eventually
requiring the use of a different system for benchmarking. Interesting
to note is that on an Intel 440BX board, the card scored higher with a
P3-600 CPU than it did with a P3-800 CPU on the VIA board.

The features of the PCI Voodoo5 are equivalent to the AGP Voodoo5, as
you can read about in our Voodoo5
5500 AGP review. The main new feature is Full Scene Anti Aliasing,
brought to us courtesy of 3dfxâ€™s new T-Buffer. For details on everything
that can be done by the T-buffer, like shadow effects, depth of field,
motion blur, and other good stuff, check out our recent article: T-buffer
Investigated. FSAA is the only effect produced by the T-Buffer that
can be seen in current games and applications with no changes to their
programming.